


it's not love (you killed all the flowers)

by brominewaterandtears



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brominewaterandtears/pseuds/brominewaterandtears
Summary: Joe drags himself back under his covers after washing his hands, closing his eyes. Maybe if he tries hard enough, it’ll all go away.Maybe if he tries hard enough, he’ll stop seeing Jos’ smile imprinted on the underside of his eyelids even as thorny, gnarled roots creep their way around his lungs.
Relationships: Jos Buttler/Joe Root
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	it's not love (you killed all the flowers)

He holds a ring of pink camellias in his shaking hands, each petal dipped with slowly dripping blood.

They’re pretty in a way, soft and bright. Nothing like the twisted roots they came from, the thorny stems Joe can feel tearing up his insides. He coughs, and more pink petals flutter out his blood-stained lips, falling onto his lap.

In the bed next to him, Ben turns over his sleep, and Joe hurriedly collects the flowers in his hands, wiping blood from his mouth as he treads lightly to the bathroom. 

He doesn’t think anyone was awoken by his coughing fit, but he still closes the door behind him as he goes. The petals fall from his hands into the bin, a bright spot of colour among the other rubbish. As an afterthought, he winds a stretch of toilet roll round his hand and fixes layers on top of the camellias, to hide them from sight.

Joe’s not sure if he’s entirely succeeded, but his head is pounding bright spots into his vision, and his hands and mouth are covered in dried blood- if he doesn’t collapse into bed now he thinks he might faint onto the sink. 

He drags himself back under his covers after washing his hands, closing his eyes. Maybe if he tries hard enough, it’ll all go away.

Maybe if he tries hard enough, he’ll stop seeing Jos’s smile imprinted on the underside of his eyelids even as thorny, gnarled roots creep their way around his lungs.

~

Hanahaki disease they called it, a disease born from unrequited love.

Flowers, beautiful flowers, and thorns wrapping their way around your insides and crawling up your throat, slowly but surely suffocating you. It manifests in the coughing of petals to begin, and then the upheaval of whole flowers and thorny stems and blood everywhere.

Joe remembers a classmate they used to whisper about, the girl in 12B who would hide in the bathroom to cough up delicate red carnations. She made it until Valentine's Day before she collapsed on the stairs, a thin trickle of blood on her lips and a fully formed carnation extending out her mouth.

He'd seen the effects of Hanahaki before, on the floors of bars on valentine's Day lined with a thin layer of vomit and petals, in the petals fluttering out of people's mouths as they walked down the street.

But he'd never seen it like this, the uncompromising reality of the disease. Her eyes were glazed over, unseeing, face garishly pale next to the vibrant colour of the carnations in her mouth. 

"How tragic," people around him whispered as teachers began to move the body away, "how tragic to love someone into death like that."

There's a cure for Hanahaki, after all.

A simple surgery to remove the flowers, to remove the roots embedded in your lungs forever. But with the flowers, however, went the love for the person who could not love you back.

The teachers began to shoo away the crowd that had gathered, lifting the girl gently up. Joe remained, staring at the petals littering the stairs and wondered how viciously you would have to want to keep a hold of your love, how possessive you must be of that feeling in order to die rather than lose it.

Her body was carried down the stairs, and Joe kept her unseeing gaze until she fell out of sight.

~

He'd looked up the meaning of the flowers once, oddly enamoured with the nameless garden growing in his lungs.

It took a while to find them, but he eventually recognised the picture on the screen as the flowers he'd been spewing for the past week. Camellias, the website had labelled them as, pink camellias.

"Longing." Joe read out from the screen, lips quirked in a wry smile. 

The meaning of the flowers fit, he'd thought a week later, watching Jos bat in the nets.

His body flows like water as he moves, eyes focused solely on the ball in front of him with fierce concentration. 

He stops briefly to wipe at the sweat beading on his forehead, and Joe absently tracks the path of a drop down, down, down, beneath the confines of his collar.

The net bowler throws down another ball, and Jos is onto it in an instant, legs flexing as he dances up to the ball and with a swift swipe, deposits it into the summer sky.

Joe watches the ball's ascent briefly before his eyes dart back to Jos again, marking his place roughly by the stumps with his heel. Jos looks up, seemingly feeling the pair of eyes on him.

He grins when he sees Joe standing by the net. "What?" Jos mouths, knowing he won't be heard over the clanging and smacking in the nets.

Joe smiles softly, and shrugs. "Wanted to watch you." He mouths, and he thinks Jos gets the gist by his thumbs up.

He probably should go, shouldn't disrupt his player's net practise. He probably shouldn't stand here for an hour, watching and greedily drinking up the sight of Jos dismiss ball after ball in the summer heat.

Watching, gazing, smiling.

Longing.

Joe knows he could remove this feeling if he wanted to, if he wanted to live. But he has longing running up and down his body with thorny vines and delicate petals, and the feeling is so addicting that he can't let go.

He doesn't want to live in a world where his cheeks don't warm at Jos' grin or his heart doesn't speed up when they brush hands.

Really, he thinks he just loves being in love. And the feeling of being in love with Jos is incomparable.

~

He gets caught, eventually.

It's not Eoin, who keeps a watchful eye over the players, or Jimmy who is quietly observant of his surroundings- it's Ben.

It's Ben who finds out, shaking him awake from his nap on their hotel room sofa with frantic motions.

Joe sits up, and immediately feels the faint weight of several small objects sliding off his chest. He looks down, and realises that all around his feet and up the sofa petals and half-formed camellias litter the area, tinged with the dark shade of blood and vomit.

Ben looks at him fearfully, eyes shining. "What is this?" He asks.

"Hanahaki." Joe answers softly. "A manifestation of unrequited love-"

"I know what it fucking is," Ben interrupts shakily. "I want to know why, or god, how long this has been happening."

Joe opens his mouth to answer, but a loud screech suddenly cuts through the air and Ben's phone shivers on the table.

He checks the incoming message, eyes tearing away from the screen to look at Joe every other second as if he thought he was about to get up and run away.

"Jonny texted to say they'll be coming up to our room in ten minutes." Ben relays, placing the phone back on the table. "We said we'd have the party for Chris' birthday in our room, remember?"

Joe is seized with panic, staring around at the threads of fauna winding their way across the sofa and floor. "Help," he pleads beseechingly, "please help me clean this up before they get back. I'll tell you everything after, I promise."

"Wouldn't it be better if they know? They can help!" Ben argues, determinedly avoiding looking at the piles of petals Joe is hastily scooping up.

"No!" Joe raises his voice, and Ben steps back, startled. "No, I mean, not yet. I'll tell them later," he promises, quieter.

Ben purses his lips, holding Joe's gaze.

There's a sigh, and then a second pair of hands joins Joe's in rounding up the stray flowers.

~

He tells Ben everything later, as promised.

"It's Jos," he admits, sitting with his knees drawn up opposite the other man. 

Ben doesn't seem surprised, only nodding.

"He doesn't know, does he?"

"No. He'd drive himself crazy feeling guilty about it, I'm not putting that on him." He says, flicking the tab on his beer absently.

"But you're putting it on yourself?" Ben pushes, raising an eyebrow.

Joe shrugs. "I've learned to embrace it. Better him than me." He says, throwing the empty beer can in his grip into the bin with a flick. It hits the bottom with a hollow, metallic sound.

"I trust you Joe, but…" Ben turns to look at him, facing him squarely. “If you die,” he says, voice uncharacteristically quiet, “I’ll never forgive you.”

Joe's eyes widen, but Ben has already turned away, staring out the window at the orange-brushed sky.

~

"Try and avoid Jos as much as possible," Ben had advised, but that was proving harder than he'd initially thought.

Joe had tried, he'd really tried to stay away from Jos, but even if he wasn't there physically, some figment or remnant of him still existed at all times in Joe's body and brain.

He doesn't shop with Jos for Christmas presents, but still he thinks of the other man as he admires a pair of shoes he knows he'd like, or a scarf that he thinks would go well with Jos's skin tone.

Joe watches couples pass him by with linked hands, and wonders about how Jos's hands would fit in his, tracing his knuckles and thinking, this is where his fingers would fit, and curl around mine.

~

Jimmy corners him in the bathroom.

"You're in love with Jos," he says. 

It's not phrased as a question.

Joe smiles wryly, clearing away his face products from the sink as he prepares to leave. "Are you asking me or are you telling me? Because believe me, I definitely know."

"You should tell him."

Joe laughs, a harsh, brittle sound that surprises him as it tears its way out his throat. "What's the point? It's not as if he's going to say it back."

"The point is that you're hurting yourself," Jimmy pleads earnestly, leaning forward, "you can't keep going like this."

Joe meets Jimmy's gaze. "I'd rather hurt myself than risk hurting him," he states, with a tone of finality.

When he brushes past Jimmy to leave the bathroom, he doesn't try to stop him.

Later, in the comfort of his hotel room he sits down on his bed, resting his head back with a sigh.

He slides his hands into his pockets, starting when his fingers graze the clean cut edges of a card. He pulls it out of his pockets, inspecting it carefully.

It's a business card, plain but professional with the name of a clinic embossed on the front. He turns it over, and notes that one of their professed specialities is managing and treating respiratory diseases.

How serendipitous he thinks, lips curling wryly.

Jimmy must have slipped it in as he was leaving, he figures, pocketing the card again. Joe suppresses a smile at the thought, touched by Jimmy's silent support.

~

Jos finds out eventually, of course.

There's only so many times Joe can fake going to the bathroom in an hour, so as they laze together in Jos's hotel room he coughs, and lets the half-formed camellia in his mouth fall out.

Jos immediately stands up, eyes comically wide. "Oh my god," he says, and then, as Joe wheezes again and more camellias topple out, "oh my god," he repeats, dropping the book in his grip.

Joe holds the camellias in his palms for a second, gently stroking the soft edges of the petals. He looks up at Jos, who is still staring at him uncomprehendingly, so he crumples the flower in his fist and bins it.

"Sorry," he offers quietly, unsure of what else to say.

Jos shakes his head, seemingly coming out of his stupor. "No, don't apologize, I just… don't know what to say." 

He digs out a tissue from the recesses of his pockets and hands it to Joe, who uses it to wipe the left-over petals sticking to his lips.

"It's fine, you don't need to say anything," Joe says, "I'm dealing with it just fine."

Jos frowns, clearly unconvinced.

He wants to ask who, Joe can tell from the shifting of his eyes as he considers the flowers dumped unceremoniously in the bin. Who could Joe possibly love this much?

It's a taboo, of sorts, to ask about the cause of one's Hanahaki.

But Jos has never had time for faux politeness or stigmas, so he asks, of course.

Joe doesn't answer.

He's not going to put that burden on Jos. He's not going to punish him for being easy to love.

Jos doesn't push him on it, but as they sit together for the rest of the evening he holds Joe close, tugging him ever-closer to his own body as if he'll never let go.

The close proximity makes the petals in his throat shiver, but he swallows them down mercilessly, burrowing in closer to Jos' warm hold.

~

Ben's eyes are disappointed as Joe treks back into their hotel room in the early morning, shirt stained with blood and faint traces of vomit.

"You know if you go near him, it'll only get worse," Ben reprimands softly as Joe collapses onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"I know," Joe acknowledges, the words scratchy in his throat. "But he makes it so easy."

Ben sighs, dropping the point for the time being.

He leans over to Joe's bedside table, fishing something out from beneath his battered copy of Slaughterhouse Five. "So I found this card," Ben states, holding it up to Joe.

Joe sits up on his elbows, leaning forward to look at the card. Immediately he recognises it as the business card for the clinic that Jimmy had given him.

"I think it could be useful," Ben continues, voice brightening as he reads the back of it. "Should we call up and make an appointment soon?"

Joe hesitates, but when he sees Ben's eyes narrow he hastily promises to call up, taking the card from his hands and placing it in the pocket of his sweatpants

Truthfully, he has no intention of contacting the clinic, but under Ben's watchful gaze it seems that it might not be up to him after all.

He plays with the card in his pocket, turning it over and over under his fingers until it eventually folds inwards under his grip.

~

Joe eventually succumbs to Ben's nudges, and calls the number on the sleek business card in his desk drawer.

The doctor is a young, pretty looking lady called Dr Walcott, he discovers when they meet for his first appointment. She makes small talk with him as she washes her hands, drying them off and settling down into her chair.

She asks about his symptoms, about how he's coping with the disease. He answers in short, stilted sentences, unsure how open he's meant to be with this stranger after hiding it for months.

"Do you feel comfortable disclosing the identity of the subject of your Hanahaki?" Dr Walcott asks, looking up at him.

"No." He responds shortly, and she nods and leaves it at that.

"That's fine, we'll just go through some basic checks today then and see how far the flowers have progressed." 

She rolls her chair up near him, and fixes the stethoscope hanging around her neck to his chest. The metal is cold where it touches his skin as she instructs him to breathe in and out slowly.

The action tickles his lungs, and petals fall from his lips as he barks out a cough.

He goes to apologize, but Dr Walcott waves him away, picking up the petals with her gloved hands.

"Camellias," she recognises, turning the petals delicately around to face the light, "do you know their meaning?"

"Do you?"

She hums, placing the camellias into a bowl on her desk. "Longing, right?"

Joe smiles thinly. "Right."

He can see the poorly-concealed pity in her eyes as she looks up at him, hands clasped together. 

"The disease isn't that far gone. We can arrange an appointment for the removal as early as next week, if you'd like." She says earnestly.

She's already reaching for an appointment card on her desk, clearly expecting him to go through with the procedure. 

"I don't want it next week." Joe interrupts.

Dr Walcott blinks, but quickly rights herself. "That's fine, we also have later slots available-"

"I don't want it," he hesitates, "at least not yet."

She purses her lips, and her pen stops scribbling on the appointment card. "Okay," she says, "whenever you're ready."

He leaves the office after some more tests, promising to check back in after a week. Her eyes are weary as she watches him go, and he wonders how many patients she's seen and had to watch slowly die by following the same path as him.

The lifts are broken so he takes the stairs all the way down, thorns pressing deeper into his lungs with every jolting step.

~

Jos ambushes him upon his return from the clinic, complaining that they haven't been spending enough time together recently.

He attempts to slip away, but Jos is insistent and drags him to the convenience store with him. "You're so skinny recently," he teases, poking Joe's arm. There's an undercurrent of genuine concern there that Joe pretends not to pick up on. "You should be thanking me for taking you out for food so you can put some meat on your bones."

Joe raises his eyebrows, looking around the dimly lit, cramped aisles. "This isn't exactly fine-dining."

Jos laughs, sliding two popsicle boxes out of the freezer. "I don't know what you're talking about, this is clearly a five star Michelin experience."

Joe childishly sticks his tongue out at him, squeaking in surprise as Jos feigns throwing one of the boxes at him.

Jos grins, instead moving forward and slinging his arm around Joe as they traipse towards the register. The heat of his body warms Joe through, and he subconsciously leans into the embrace.

~

"How are you feeling about it today? A patient just cancelled, so we can have the procedure as early as tomorrow, if you want."

"I-," Joe hesitates, gripping the scratchy underside of the chair hard with his fingers. "No thank you. Not yet."

Dr Walcott smiles sadly, nodding. "Of course. Whenever you're ready."

At the back of his mind, a persistent thought remains. He doesn't think he'll ever be ready.

~

"Happy birthday!" yells Jos, startling Joe into awareness just before his bedroom door snaps open.

Joe sits up in bed in time to see Jos carefully walk into his room with a breakfast tray and a wide grin. 

"What's all this?" Joe asks, laughing. Jos carefully deposits the tray onto his lap, removing the foil from the food.

"I thought the birthday boy deserved something special today, and what's more special than birthday in bed?" He leans closer, and Joe's breath hitches. "Also, I persuaded Silverwood to give us an extra thirty minutes before the practise session to give you extra time to eat." Jos winks conspiratorially, leaning back with a grin.

"Thanks," Joe smiles warmly, shifting forward to bring the tray closer.

He blows on the food, taking a bite as Jos watches nervously, rubbing the tip of his nose as he awaits Joe's feedback.

Breakfast turns out to be slightly burned scrambled eggs, a very burned piece of toast, and lumpy porridge.

Joe eagerly forces it down and praises Jos, who goes pink with pleasure.

"It's great," he lies, revelling in Jos' relieved smile. He opens his mouth to continue, but chokes, rubbery pieces of egg and flowers spitting out his mouth as he coughs, desperately grabbing for a tissue from his drawers.

Joe looks up, wiping his mouth with the tissue. Jos is turned away, eyes red. "Do you want to try some?" He asks, trying to return the mood, but Jos just shakes his head minutely.

"It's okay, you enjoy it. I should go," he says shortly, hand skating along Joe's shoulder absently as he leaves.

Joe is left alone in the room, tissue clutched in his right hand, the breakfast tray still full of food leaning perilously. He looks at the assortment of food, and stands up with the tray in hand.

He throws it all in the bin, casting the breakfast tray across the room with a loud clatter.

~

He tells Dr Walcott about Jos some appointments later.

He brings out an old, crinkled picture of the two of them from his wallet, passing it over to her. They're both laughing in the picture, Jos with his head thrown back and shoulders relaxed, and Joe grinning, looking up at him.

"You really love him," she comments, thumbing the creases of Joe's face in the picture, the affection in his gaze all too prominent.

"Yeah," he admits, for lack of anything else to say.

She looks up at him carefully, handing the picture back to him. "Do you think he loves you too?" 

Joe snorts. "No. Well not in the romantic way at least. Not in the right way."

Dr Walcott hums, considering this as she scribbles something down on her clipboard.

There's a lull as she writes, and then, "Does there have to be a right way? Isn't that kind of love beautiful too?"

He doesn't answer, but later when he thinks about it, he's not sure that the kind of love infesting and destroying his body is all that beautiful either.

~

It comes to a head five days later.

He could fill a vase up with these, Joe thinks absently as he lifts up fully formed camellias from the floor.

The delicate pink colour of the petals is soaked through with blood, the liquid permeating the flowers right down to the stem where it coalesces at the bottom in a steady drip.

This is the last stage.

The final stage of Hanahaki.

Joe sighs, knees clicking as he hauls himself to his feet. Dr Walcott's words ring in his head as he moves, approaching Jos who stands at the end of the corridor, idly checking his phone.

_Isn't that kind of love beautiful too?_

Jos looks up at the sound of his footsteps, eyes crinkling into a smile as he puts his phone away.

Joe doesn't want to waste any time.

"Do you love me?" He asks, stepping forward and holding himself up by tangling his hands in Jos' hoodie.

Jos tilts his head, confused. "Of course," he admits simply.

The team is free with expressions of love, Joe thinks he's even been kissed on the mouth before by some of his teammates at the peak of excitement after a wicket- Jos has no issue with freely saying he loves him. But that's not what Joe means.

"No, I-" Joe laughs breathlessly, "I mean, do you _love_ me." 

He can tell by Jos' expression that he still doesn't really understand. "Of course, Joe."

His eyes are clear and shining with affection as he talks. He really does love him.

Of course.

But just in the wrong way. Or maybe Joe loves him in the wrong way, in the sick way of pain and blood and twisted yearning. 

"Okay," he smiles dizzily, "of course."

Joe looks up at Jos, releasing his hoodie from the death-grip of his hands. "That's fine. Thanks."

He feels a lump the size of a baseball rise in his throat. Stuff it down, close the lid, shut the curtain so Jos won't see the desolation that sticks to his ribs and clenches around his lungs.

Jos raises his eyebrows in puzzlement, hands reaching out to Joe, but he's already walking away.

~

His hands are shaking as he dials the number for the clinic, and Ben and Jimmy each place a calming hand on his shoulders.

"Hello?" Dr Walcott's voice comes through the phone.

Joe takes in a deep breath, feeling the camellias within him shift with the movement.

"I'm ready," he says, and he can feel the answering smile from the other end of the line.

~

Joe wakes up to the white of the hospital ceiling, and an aching numbness in his chest.

He struggles to sit up, waiting for the inevitable cough as he exerts himself, but it never comes.

Ben rushes to hand him the glass of water sitting on the bedside table, and he eagerly gulps it down.

"How are you feeling?" Ben asks, lips twitching as if trying to suppress a grin. His happiness is evident though, radiating from his body.

"Fine," Joe replies, and is surprised when he realises it's actually true.

The ever-present itch in his throat is gone, and his breaths are no longer wheezing rattles. 

Ben grins widely, seemingly giving up on hiding his excitement. "You have no idea how great it is to see you looking healthier again." He gushes, bouncing in his seat. "Dr Walcott showed us an X-ray of your lungs before and after- everything's been cleared out of there now."

Joe smiles faintly, making a note to get some sort of present for Dr Walcott after he was released. "Us? So the other guys know too?" He asks.

"Yeah," Ben relays sheepishly, scratching the back of his head, "Jonny heard Jimmy and I discussing the procedure and soon the entire group knew. I think some of them suspected anyway, but they're all out there now, waiting for you."

"But you didn't tell them who-"

"No," he answers shortly, "that's your secret to keep."

Joe smiles again, taking Ben's hands his own. "Thank you," he says, "for helping me through this."

Ben beams, opening his mouth to reply, but the door bursts open as Jonny and Mark stumble through. Jonny makes eye contact with Joe, then turns back and hollers "He's awake!"

Then, a stampede emerges through the doors, a group of about fifteen men skidding in and immediately heading for Joe.

After a brief moment of chaos, Jimmy sends the rest of them out and orders them to back one by one so they don't overwhelm Joe.

Jimmy sits down by the bed, looking at Joe quietly. "Feeling better?" He asks.

"Much."

"That's good," he says, eyes shining slightly as he turns towards the light, "that's really good."

Joe places a hand on Jimmy's, and they sit there for a moment as the leader wipes his eyes with a tissue from his pocket.

"Jos is demanding to visit you next," he says, crumpling up the tissue. "Is that okay, or should I tell him to wait?"

"No," Joe says, shaking his head, "I want to see him."

The phrasing of his answer has Jimmy pausing, clearly worried that somehow the procedure hadn't been enough, that his feelings had somehow still remained.

He opens the door anyway to call Jos in, trusting Joe and leaving it in his hands.

Jos slips in, holding a flower bouquet between clasped hands.

Joe raises his eyebrows and starts laughing at the gift, and a flustered Jos lightly smacks his arm with the flowers.

"Don't laugh at me! I'm aware this isn't the most… appropriate thing right now, but I thought it would be a nice sentiment." He stretches the bouquet out, letting Joe feel the edges of the flowers.

"Daffodils," Joe recognises, looking up at Jos. "Any particular reason?"

Jos rocks back on the balls of his feet. "Apparently they represent new beginnings. I thought it was fitting, that you could look at them on your bedside table as you recover and remember that the slate is wiped clean. What do you think?" He asks, chewing nervously on his lower lip.

Joe looks at Jos, taking in the creases in the corner of his eyes and the pink of his smile as his lips tug up. His eyes are brimming with affection, shining in the harsh light of the hospital.

Yet, the only thought that crosses Joe's mind as he registers this is a faint 'pretty'. 

He thinks Jos is pretty, but when he leans forward to place a daffodil into Joe's hands, his heart doesn't start stammering, his neck doesn't heat up.

He considers the daffodil in his grip, twirling it around. "I like that idea," Joe decides.

He takes a deep breath- in and out, and realises that he can finally breathe.


End file.
